Middle East

Migratory birds of the flamingo species congregate at the shore of Kuwait City. Flamingos and other migratory birds are having regular appearances on the coast at the beginning of warm winter in Kuwait. Photo Raed Quetena/EPA

Activists from the Lebanese NGO Abaad (Dimensions), a resource centre for gender equality protest in downtown Beirut against article 522 in the Lebanese penal code. The article shields rapists from prosecution on the condition that they marry their victim, a phenomenon that is still practised in the country, especially among conservative families whose chief aim is to preserve the family’s so-called “honour.” Photo Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty

Abu Omar’s daughters Ghazal and Deema (right) sit in the shelter the rebel-held town of Douma, on the eastern outskirts of Damascus. Abu Omar, with the help of his neighbour, was able to dig and prepare an underground shelter consisting of a single room in the space of two weeks. The shelter is four meters below ground and has an air vent for emergencies. Photo Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty Images

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish youth holds a chicken as others perform the Kaparot ritual, where white chickens are slaughtered as a symbolic gesture of atonement, in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighbourhood ahead of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which starts at sundown on Tuesday. Photo Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

A Muslim pilgrim sits on the top of Mount Al-Noor, where Muslims believe Prophet Mohammad received the first words of the Koran through Gabriel in the Hera cave, ahead of the annual haj pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia